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>Homo sapiens is almost certainly not going to go extinct even in a worst-case scenario. This is an incredibly arrogant assumption.
by riffic 10y ago
>Homo sapiens is almost certainly not going to go extinct even in a worst-case scenario.
This is an incredibly arrogant assumption.
- burke 10y agoI don't think this is true. Even with an unbreathable atmosphere, some tiny fraction of humans would survive with recycled air, solar power, and greenhouse vegetables. It's conceivable that climate change could kill 99%+. I would be very surprised if it exterminated us completely.
- anon1253 10y agoNot long ago I thought the same thing. We can live on the ISS, so even if there's no oxygen and temperatures will be perpetually 200ºC above current, I'm sure we can construct habitats (even small cities) that could be self-sustaining and live. But here's the catch: these things don't happen instantly. It's not a turn-based RPG where somebody decides one turn to "build self-sustaining, hermetically sealed arks", before these things become an absolute necessity we may have already lost the infrastructural or technological abilities to do so (even the raw materials come from /everywhere/ on Earth these days). Worse yet, when the social-economic inequality is the difference between life and death, I'm sure a lot of people will be very angry. And very angry people do stupid things. So you build an ark to live, but not everyone outside is truly dead yet, I'm very sure these people would like to get in. Destructively.